


Without you, without me

by HogwartsToAlexandria



Series: Marie's POTS Server Stocking Fills 2019 [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Communication, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Back Together, M/M, Makeup, Post-Break Up, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22406386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HogwartsToAlexandria/pseuds/HogwartsToAlexandria
Summary: Tony was right here and nobody had bothered to warn him he would before he agreed to come along to get drinks from the pub around the corner. He should have known really - it was the bar Tony used to come to before they had even met after all - but damn it sucked.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Marie's POTS Server Stocking Fills 2019 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1560796
Comments: 7
Kudos: 83
Collections: POTS (18+) Stony Stocking 2019





	Without you, without me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Orange_Coyote](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orange_Coyote/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Orange_Coyote](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orange_Coyote/pseuds/Orange_Coyote) in the [stony_stocking_2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/stony_stocking_2019) collection. 



> Hey merry Christmas in February dear! Hope you'll like this sad then sweet symphony ;-) 😘  
> Betad by the WonderWoman that is Betheflame as always ❤❤

The room felt both chilly and too hot now that Steve had seen him. Tony was right here and nobody had bothered to warn him he would before he agreed to come along to get drinks from the pub around the corner. He should have known really - it was the bar Tony used to come to before they had even met after all - but damn it sucked. 

Steve tried to keep his eyes and attention on Sam and Nat's banter, or on Stephen and Bucky's conversation, on the selection of beers displayed on chalkboard menus on the walls, anything to not stare across the three round tables they'd allocated themselves and into Tony's eyes, down the shine of his shirt in the low-light of the Irish-themed pub. He tried as much as he could but he could only be so strong. He could only try so long. 

There came a moment when he couldn't pretend any longer, when he stopped listening to what Pepper was telling them and he let his gaze drift just to her left, right into Tony's glaring eyes. He stared. And he stared. And his heart pounded right at his ears as he watched Tony's jaw working, then relaxing, and again. 

He hadn't said much more than Steve himself all night. That anyone around the table had thought this was a good idea was a wonder. And Steve found the end of his rope when he turned sideways just as Tony's eyes were lost in the void, the man thinking hard and Steve's hurt, buried feelings roared inside his chest, was putting a taste in his mouth that got too unbearable to stay put. 

He leaned towards Nat, "Can you catch a ride with Sam?" 

She gave him a short nod, the look in her eyes, full of an understanding Steve didn't want to see, still not believing no one had thought to  _ tell  _ him. Steve got up, took his jacket from the back of his chair and put it on quietly.

"Bye, guys." He waved without looking before striding between the tables and outside the door. 

The New York City night wind slapped him in the face as much as it allowed him to take his first deep breath in. He rubbed his face, pausing only a few feet away from the door before he kept walking. He could hear his own breathing, ragged, tearful, above the traffic and the thousands of other noises the millions of lives around him could make. He thought he'd bumped into someone as he rounded the corner and prepared to apologize profusely - Steve Rogers had been raised right, thank you very much - but... it was Tony. Right there, his hand on Steve's sleeve, the warmth of his palm somehow seeping through the fabric of his jacket. 

"No way." 

"I--" Tony cleared his throat, "I took the back door, figured you'd end up somewhere about here." 

Steve blinked, trying not to dwell on the low notes of Tony's voice, or the fact that these were the first words they'd said to each other since that night where they'd both stormed off, and that phone call he made to tell him he'd be staying with Nat and Sam for a while. A while that had already lasted two months. Two months of being miserable. 

"What do you want, Tony?" 

"Talk? Can we talk?" Tony's voice didn't waver this time, but his usual cheery lilt wasn't there, and the skin under his eyes was dark, darker than whenever he pulled an all nighter at work and it was all wrong and Steve once again had to crush the voice inside of him that told him to get out there and let all of  _ his _ words out.

He gave him a jerky nod. People would usually ask the old  _ "your place or mine"  _ question, but it stayed stuck in Steve's throat this time. Because it wasn't  _ Tony's  _ place, it was  _ theirs _ , or it had been. He couldn't ask. 

"I'm parked a few streets away." Tony cut into his road towards hyperventilation. 

"Ok," was all Steve could get out. 

It was strange, and utterly painful, to be walking side by side with Tony in the silence of their break-up, in the heavy space of all that remained unsaid, the taste of wasted happiness. Neither of them said a sound, and somehow, despite both knowing they were stealing glances at each other every chance they got, their gazes never met. 

Tony opened the car and they slipped in, Steve's hands clammy and his heart in his socks. Nothing too different from the time he'd been having in the past few weeks.  _ Cheers to Nat and Sam for putting up with me, _ he thought, repressing a self-deprecating sigh.

Steve kept a tight grip on the inner handle of the door, his knuckles turning white as he tried his best to look at the street ahead instead of staring at Tony. Never done anything harder in his life. 

They arrived to the apartment building pretty quickly, and Steve felt his eyes water on the spot. Fuck. This was supposed to be home. His exhale came out louder than he intended and Tony, still silent, turned sideways to look at him. His face was closed, but Steve thought he could see something there, concern, and a hint of what he'd been seeing in the mirror ever since he'd last been inside this lobby, or this elevator, or this apartment. 

Tony closed the door behind him, letting Steve walk further into the living room. Steve couldn't help looking around like he'd never been here, like it had been years. Nothing had changed, of course not. There was nothing anywhere, not one displaced item or empty pizza box or…

"You expecting to see a dumpster or something?"

Steve made a wounded noise at the tone Tony used, the defensiveness. 

"That's what Nat's been calling the room they gave me," Steve eventually answered, laying his cards rather than hiding them this time. 

He'd thought about this conversation too many times, had thought about Tony too long and too yearningly, to do anything but. 

Tony sat on the couch with a defeated sigh. "Pepper hired someone," he admitted. 

Steve came around the couch, hopeful that this meant what he thought it might, scared it might just as well be wishful thinking. Their gazes met, just a few feet of distance between them. 

"Tony -" 

"Steve," they said at the same time. 

"You go ahead." Tony waved his hand quickly - nervously, Steve's mind told him before he crushed it down.

"I…" Steve watched Tony's face, every little crease and change of tone and facial hair and the sparks of colors in his eyes, and he sighed, his shoulders slumped as he rubbed his face. He shook his head, cleared his throat again, and went to sit on the edge of the coffee table, his knees encasing Tony's. He didn't know what to do with his hands, so he folded them together - or else he would reach for Tony, of course he would. 

"I miss you." Steve finally said, his voice almost pleading, his eyes threatening to spill, his hands shaking. "That doesn't solve any of our issues, I know it doesn't, but I fucking miss you so much, Tony." 

His exhale was loud in the silence of Tony's shocked expression, an expression that was both painful and fatalistic to Steve right then. Of course Tony would have thought about almost every other thing that could have come out of his mouth but that. 

"Tony?" Steve brought one his knee until it touched that of the other man, his eyes fixed upon Tony's own, wet, sad brown ones. 

Tony shook his head, facing away from Steve and waving his hand again as if to stall him, as if to tell him he couldn't speak and Steve caught his hand mid-air this time. He just had to. Had to touch him, hold him, reassure him the way he could see now he had caused Tony to need. He'd done that. He'd caused harm to the one person--

"I love you, you know that, right? I love you more than life you, brilliant, workaholic ass, you are everything Tony and I've been, I  _ am _ the most miserable version of me I could  _ ever _ be without you…" Steve studied Tony's face, his hands shaking around his knee - didn't realize he was gripping it so hard before now - and Tony's wrist. Nothing could calm his heartbeat or breathing as he waited - waited to hear Tony's answer, waited to know if he'd said the right thing knowing he couldn't have said anything else but the truth he'd just laid out. 

Their break-up, or break period, had been ugly, papers thrown off desks and shouts that resonated through the penthouse so loud the neighbors might have heard them a floor down and through soundproof floors and walls, words, that went over and way, way beyond what either of them had meant to say. It had been so ugly, and had kept being ugly as Steve cried in anger, and then in shock, and then in grief in the night, certain this time that his pain was heard by both Nat and Sam through the much thinner walls of their apartment. But he'd had his friends at least, even when he didn't want their comfort, even when he rejected them and stayed in the room they'd settled him in for days, he'd known they were there and ready to help. Tony must have sent Pepper away and closed off the way he did when he was feeling down - and Steve knew now, had thought he already did but what a fool he'd been, he knew now watching Tony's face and letting the dark circles and harsh lines on his face imprint in his mind, he'd been in as much pain, and more trauma than he had. 

"I'll always be here for you," Steve breathed, choked really, and when all that Tony did was sob in answer, Steve let go. 

He pushed at Tony's legs and manhandled his slim - slimmer than before - waist and back until he was sitting under him, until Tony was sat sideways on his lap and he could wrap his arms around him, his whole self really. Tony tried to talk, a few times, started over, and sobbed again in a sorrowful quiet that tore at Steve's heart. 

"I'm sorry," Tony cried in his neck after a while, hiccups breaking the pattern of those three simple words as he fisted his hand in Steve's shirt and Steve hissed. 

"You don't have to be sorry. Don't be sorry, I'm sorry." Steve's heart was at his throat trying to claw out, to show its face to Tony's pretend all-seeing eyes, to his blind mind, to make him see. 

Tony leaned back just enough that they could look into each other's eyes again, his eyes diluted in tears but somehow managing to project his hope, and what Steve had been living off for so long now - and not long at all either - his love. 

"Please," Tony whispered, his fingers touching Steve's face like he couldn't believe he was really here, right here, touchable. 

"Please." Steve answered, his own hands closing on Tony's hip as well as the back of his head as he pulled Tony closer still, and brought their lips together. 

His own tears flowed out as the taste of the man he couldn't live without washed over him, the muscle memory of their feelings for each other acting as a buffer for the clumsiness of their despair and longing alike. They kissed, and kissed, and breathed in each other's faces, existed, in each other's embrace, and cried, until night fell over New York like a weighted blanket, dark and black and all-encompassing behind the windows, and they calmed down. They stayed on that couch, living in this bubble of finding each other again, and watched one another, touched and gave tentative, frail smiles the likes of which they hadn't found themselves capable of producing for too long. 

Steve was parched for the sight and feel and knowledge of Tony's presence in everything he did and sensed and thought. Tony clung to him, telling him without another word how much that was true for him, too. 

It wouldn't solve the problem that had drawn them apart just then, but it all also proved how futile, how irrelevant it had been to begin with, when it's all about needing each other, to walk the earth and live the life they'd designed together, one step at a time, and one touch of their hands to each other's hearts, slow, and steady. Constant. Together again.

  
  



End file.
